Stefán Máni - The Ship

22 December

Satan and Jónas are walking along the shore over the creaking ice, wearing sunglasses and dragging the ship’s stretcher behind them. On the stretcher – which is moulded out of fibre-reinforced plastic and resembles a sled or shallow boat – is all their luggage: clothing, coverings, fuel, instruments and provisions. It is generally easier for walkers to carry their burdens rather than drag them behind, but when you’re walking over ice and snow it’s better to spread the weight to reduce the danger of sinking into the surface over which you’re travelling.

The two of them walk side by side a metre apart, wearing life vests over their parkas. Three-metre-long nylon ropes attached to the back of each vest come together in a hole in the ‘bow’ of the stretcher. They leave a trail winding across the uneven ice behind them, all the way back to the ship: a sporadic double stripe from the runners under the stretcher, the shallow tracks of rough-soled work boots either side of the stripes and Skuggi’s paw prints all around. But the snow blows eternally over the ice, which means their tracks will disappear within an hour.

In the distance the ship is only a black stripe on top of the white ice and under the white sky.

Or is it the other way around?

Jónas looks over his shoulder to take a last look at the ship before it disappears from view forever. This automatically slows his walking, which in turn moves all the weight onto Satan’s rope.

‘None of that!’ says Satan, punching Jónas’s left shoulder with his right fist. ‘Forget the fucking ship. It can look after itself.’

‘No need to get steamed up,’ mutters Jónas. He speeds up to keep pace with Satan, who’s storming ahead like a hungry polar bear. The second mate already feels tired and anxious. He’s thirsty, confused and dispirited. His back aches, his legs ache and his left shoulder aches. Most of all he wants to turn back and just hole up in the ship, but he knows he can’t do that. He has no faith in this enterprise. What was he thinking when he turned his back on the captain?

Shit!

Now he’s stuck with this madman!

Jónas deeply regrets not having listened to the voice of reason and headed south with Sæli and Guðmundur Berndsen.

23 December

They’re sitting on their backsides, on a hard snowdrift facing each other, Jónas with the smaller pot and Satan with the larger. They’ve been walking for a total of fourteen hours and this is their third stop. It’s evening, the sun is hidden by clouds, there’s a strong breeze from the south-east and the temperature is about minus twelve degrees.

Jónas fills the smaller pot almost to the rim with snow. Then he measures out two plastic glasses of oatmeal and two of sugar from two plastic canisters and empties them into the snow.

Satan pulls five strips of thin cotton out of an overfull plastic bag and packs them into the bottom of the larger pot. Then he unscrews the cap of a two-litre Coke bottle wound round with cotton and aluminium foil, and pours about half a litre of petrol into the pot.

‘I’m ready,’ says Satan and Jónas places the smaller pot into the larger one.

Satan lights a match in the shelter of Jónas’s hands and lets it fall down the space between the two pots. They hear a soft explosion; the red fire lights up their faces and black smoke rises into the night. After one minute all the snow has melted; after two the water in the smaller pot is boiling, and after three minutes the fire has gone out and the porridge is ready.

‘Here,’ says Satan and hands Jónas the spoon they brought with them. Jónas takes the spoon and fills it twice before handing it back, and they continue taking turns until they finish the porridge.

‘It tastes of petrol,’ says Jónas, retching.

‘If you puke, I’ll make you eat your puke!’ says Satan, shovelling down two spoonfuls before handing the spoon back to Jónas.

‘I can’t eat any more,’ Jónas says, leaning back so he won’t have to breathe in the stink of hot petrol. ‘You just finish it.’

‘Okay,’ says Satan and he carries on eating the sickly sweet, petrol-polluted concoction. ‘But if you give up when we’re walking, I’ll leave you behind.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ mutters Jónas, lying down on his side in the snowdrift and closing his eyes.

‘Don’t fall asleep!’ says Satan, kicking the second mate. ‘If you fall asleep you’ll never wake up again.’

‘So what?’ Jónas sits back up. The warmth of the cooling pot is nice but the thought of ice-cold eternal sleep is even better.

‘You’ve got four minutes to recharge your batteries,’ says Satan. He licks the spoon before he sticks it in his pocket. ‘We set off again the minute the pots have cooled down.’

Skuggi whines and Satan lets him lick the scrapings out of the pot.

‘I just want to sleep,’ murmurs Jónas and he closes his eyes. Or are they open? It’s hard to keep your eyes open when the darkness outside them is as deep as the darkness within.

24 December

They are walking up a slope that appears to be as endless as the heavens. The snow seems set aflame by the sun that shines directly in their faces whether they look up or down; the headwind is as strong as it is cold; the snow is hard on top and soft underneath; the sled pulls at the ropes like a stubborn horse and their feet sink up to mid calf at every step.

The skin of their faces is red, swollen and cracked by the sun, frost and wind, their arms are stiff as planks, their legs burn with fatigue and tendonitis, red winds blow in their heads, nausea comes and goes and their stomachs burn like cauldrons full of petrol…

‘Look!’ says Satan when they finally crest the hill.

‘I don’t see anything,’ says Jónas and he stops moving, then it’s as if his body becomes weightless and rises off the ground. He lifts his arms very slowly, as if they were huge construction cranes, and shades his eyes, which are swollen and sore and full of yellow secretions and clear mucus.

The mountains! Millions of megatonnes of prehistoric granite surrounded by a whole Black Sea of dark-blue glacier. Here time is not measured in minutes and days – not even in years or centuries. Here a million years is one day, a thousand million days one year, and eternity is not simply a concept in this world of delirium and death. Eternity is a regular breathing beyond time, space and human understanding.

‘We’ve come almost halfway,’ says Satan clapping Jónas on the back. ‘Not bad, comrade!’

In front of them are about fifty kilometres of snowdrifts, fissures and firn, then the enormous mountain range stretches halfway to the sky, far inland and way out on the ice to the north. The two peaks loom like a gigantic granite-and-ice cathedral and between them lies a shadow that looks not a centimetre smaller than Denmark.

‘If all goes well we should reach shelter before dark,’ says Satan. He signals the second mate to keep walking.

‘Shouldn’t we rest a moment?’ asks Jónas, pulling his numb feet out of the snow. They’ve been walking steadily for fifty hours and have covered an equal number of kilometres. Every single kilometre has been utter hell, every single hour unbearable and every single moment laden with hopelessness, exhaustion and a death wish.

‘We’ll eat after two hours,’ says Satan, striding off.

‘Aren’t we going to skirt the mountains?’ Jónas points north to where the ice on the Weddell Sea stretches to the limits of their vision.